Aleš Březina

“We didn’t work eight hours there, we worked twelve hours a day in the damp - those were the infamous chatons [glass gems - trans.]. I turned a crank, which was the best job there I could have. Because at least you moved around a bit, whereas others had to sit twelve hours a day by the burner and stare into the flame, which the other prisoners, for instance... We’re all different, the other prisoners preferred it. But thanks to that my eyesight is damaged only to the extent it is. Well, and in those thirty degrees in winter and fifty degrees in summer we were awash with filthy water, because the water wasn’t cleaned, it circulated from the sewers and led back into those pipes, so they got blocked up and the filth leaked out at us. And in this water I turned that infamous crank for the rest of my sentence.”

“It started with a careful sounding out, to begin with. And the first provocative question - if I remember - was, why can’t young people travel? The answer of the Party was that they can travel because they have the option to travel with the Youth Travel Agency. And someone says: ‘We don’t want to travel with the Youth Travel Agency, we want to travel on our own and discover the world.’ And they said: ‘Well, but you’d be affected by influences that would be out of your control.’ And another question, it was getting sharp: ‘Why is [Radio] Free Europe jammed?’ And the comrade replied: ‘That’s because it broadcasts news that we cannot objectively assess, and so you have to have objective news from our radio.’ And back Honza Plíhal, who was a year older, argued that our radio also broadcasts unobjective news, and that if we were to be able to assess it objectively, we would have to know both opinions. To which one Hanuš, who was an activist type, raised his hand and said: ‘But why does our radio broadcast false news about things that we are capable of assessing objectively?’”